


The Return

by koalathebear



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Man of Steel (2013), Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Gen, One Shot, Post-Canon, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 14:45:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6911455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koalathebear/pseuds/koalathebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after Batman v Superman.  I've just finished watching Supergirl and wanted to write a little scribble about Kara finding out about Clark's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Return

The iChat window popped up on her screen with a snap making Kara smiled - the way she always did when Clark messaged.

Clark: Morning, coz

Kara: Fully recovered?

Clark: Let's just say – I've been doing a lot of sun bathing the last few days to get over it.

Kara's smile broadened.

*

Lois sat on the sofa, legs pulled up against her body, arms wrapped around her legs as she stared blindly ahead of her in the darkness. From the study, Clark's computer made an emphatic beeping sound and Lois walked over and stared at the screen.

_"Clark? Clark? What's happened? I saw the news – what's happened? Please … I'm worried about you."_

Lois pulled out the chair and sat down in the darkness, the glow of the monitor illuminating her pale face. The desktop image was a photograph of her and Clark standing in front of the Daily Planet and grinning like a pair of idiots.

For once in her life, Lois Lane, crack reporter found herself staring at the screen with absolutely no idea what to type and how to begin …

*

"Martha – are you all right?" Lois' voice was very worried as she answered the phone.

"I'm all right … but Lois, I think you need to come to Smallville if you can – it's Kara… "

*

"How long has she been like that?" Lois asked haltingly, staring at the slender figure in red and blue … a stark picture of grief and shock as she stood by Clark's gravesite at the Smallville cemetery.

"A few days …" Martha replied, sorrow in her voice. "She isn't crying … she isn't talking … she's just standing there …"

Lois nodded and took a deep breath before walking across the soft grass to stand beside Kara Zor-El of Krypton. Known to most as Supergirl, Lois had come to know her as Kara Danvers - Clark's cousin. While Supergirl's work in National City generally kept her too busy to venture far from her home base, the young woman had occasionally joined Lois and Clark for a meal, a drink … even a movie night once. 

There had also been the odd occasion when Clark had flown to National City to help his cousin.

"She doesn't really like it when I interfere, though …" Clark had told Lois with a grimace after one such instance.

"I'm sure she can take care of herself, after all," Lois had replied with a grin. 

Lois barely recognised the young woman now. Her face pale and drawn, eyes swollen and red, eyes almost dead …

"Kara – please come back to the house," Lois told her gently. "We'll have a cup of tea with Martha and – "

"I went to his _tomb_ in Metropolis … knew immediately that the casket was empty and that he wasn't there. So I came here." She stared down through the earth intensely, her gaze distant and cold. 

"We had to lie … say that his body was destroyed – incinerated in the fight, otherwise …"

"Cadmus." Kara's voice was flat. Matter-of-fact.

Lois nodded. "They would have demanded that we provide his body to them to be … dissected …"

Project Cadmus was a governmental research lab tasked with experimenting on extraterrestrial threats. A genetic engineering facility, it was why Clark wouldn't work with the government. He found their activities vile and abhorrent.

Kara's gaze intensified as she stared through the earth. "I can see him Lois - he looks like he's sleeping …"

The lump in Lois' throat was at the point of being unbearably painful. "Kara …I'm so sorry … he loved you … I – "

"How did he die?"

"I told you."

"Tell me again."

"He was fighting Doomsday."

"And he was stabbed with kryptonite?"

"Yes … no …" Lois replied in confusion. "He stabbed Doomsday with the kryptonite spear, but the kryptonite weakened him, too … so he was vulnerable when Doomsday stabbed him …"

Kara stiffened and turned slowly towards Lois, her head tilted slightly. "So he wasn't killed with krypronite…"

"Not exactly, but – Kara what are you doing?" There was horror in Lois' voice as she watched Kara dig through the earth of Clark's grave with her bare hands.

"Alive or dead - this is no place for a son of Krypton," Kara told her in a low, furious voice. Within seconds, she had emerged from the grave and was hovering in the air, Clark's lifeless body in her arms. Clark's body looked unchanged from the day of his burial …his face pale and calm and Lois staggered back with a horrified gasp, her expression aghast.

"Kara – oh my God …no – please don't - " Nausea rose in Lois' throat as dirt fell through the air from Clark's limp body. Lois failed to notice that the earth shimmered for a moment, hovering slightly before falling to the ground.

And then he and Kara were both gone, nothing more than a blur across the skyline and then they vanished.

*

The Fortress of Solitude was uncharacteristically sombre as Kara Zor-El walked along its bright, white corridors, her cousin's limp body in her arms.

She lay him down on a raised dais of ice and snow, straightening his glasses and brushing his dark hair from his face before taking a step back. The sunlight was almost blinding as it streamed through the transparent crystal of the high ceiling, making his pale skin look almost healthy and alive once more.

One tear slid down her cheek and fell to the icy ground at her feet before she turned away and began to fashion a Kryptonian casket, designed to carry her cousin towards Rao, the sun god…

*

When the casket was almost complete, a movement from the dais made her frown and turn her head in perplexity. Clark's body looked as though it was radiating light … or absorbing the sunlight that enveloped his body …

"Is that coffin for me, cousin?" the voice was hoarse, husky from disuse but filled with Clark's inimitable wry humour.

Buried deep in the earth, away from the sun's enriching rays, his body had been unable to heal itself … but now – now the strength was slowly returning to his body and he smiled at his cousin's face that stared at him with equal degrees of joy and shock.

 _"Clark?"_ She stared at him. "How is this possible?"

"Will you be offended if I don't want to use that thing yet?" he asked her, gesturing towards the coffin that she had started to carve with the rhymes of the ancients.

As he rose to his feet gingerly, the ground spinning slightly, he gave an oof of amusement as Kara flung herself into his arms before he was completely steady on his feet. 

"Why didn't you _call_ me?" she demanded furiously. "I could have helped you … I didn't even know that things were as bad as they were!"

"It's not like you're sitting on your hands over there in National City, Kara – I know you have a lot on your plate."

"As opposed to you – fighting a genetically engineered monster and Batman as well!" Kara's voice cracked a little as she continued to stare at him as this was a dream and he might vanish from her sight. "Cousin – I'm done doing it your way. No more fighting alone. " Clark's position had been that humans feared the sight of one Kryptonian enough already – to have two of them fighting side by side would terrify them even further, make them worry that there was an army assembling.

"Kara – " his voice was reasonable.

"No. You listen to me on this. I hate to say it but Bruce Wayne's right. From now on, we do it together."

Clark was nodding his head in appeasement but at the mention of Bruce Wayne's name his head snapped up.

"What did you say? Oh god, what's that lunatic been up to while I've been away? Tell me," Clark told her firmly, his brows drawing into a fierce frown.

"He's assembling a team of metahumans to help protect the world in your absence."

Clark flinched. Then both of them stopped abruptly and listened. "We have visitors," they both announced at once and then made their way to the entrance to watch the helicopter with the Wayne family crest emblazoned on its side landing in the ice a short distance from the Fortress.

"So much for a Fortress of Solitude," Clark muttered beneath his breath.

"Hey at least you have one," Kara retorted.

*

"Whoah, I'm not 100% yet," Clark mumbled as Lois threw herself into his arms.

"Wayne," he acknowledged the older man with a faint inclination of his head. "Ma'am," he nodded at the tall, strikingly beautiful woman at Bruce Wayne's side. He recognised her as the fierce Amazonian who had fought against Doomsday. The same woman he had seen at the LexCorp party.

"Diana Prince," she introduced herself, her voice rich with the flavour of someone for whom English was not a native language.

"Good to see you're alive, Kent," Bruce Wayne told him grimly. "You didn't make it easy to find this place, even with Ms Lane's directions."

"Not all of us have the luxury of being able to hide our secret lairs beneath our homes," Clark pointed out.

"How is this possible?" Lois demanded, interrupting the exchange of sardonic barbs before it could escalate. "I thought you were dead!"

"Only kryptonite can kill him – he was stabbed by Doomsday, not the spear … "

"Then when you buried me, I couldn't regenerate from the sun," Clark said dryly.

"Sorry for burying you, it's what we do with dead people here on earth," Bruce muttered beneath his breath.

"No hard feelings," Clark assured the older man. "As far as you knew, I was dead."

"Just take it," Diana told Bruce, elbowing him in the ribs and making him wince.

"I guess I'd better find out what trouble you've all been up to while I've been gone …."

****

end


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